


we live in the summer

by manycoloureddays



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, First Kiss, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Other, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manycoloureddays/pseuds/manycoloureddays
Summary: Now he’s sixteen, and summer means no classes, no professors constantly watching their every move. No stupid rules about going back to separate common rooms, and “please, Mr Tozier, for the last time, just because it’s impressive magic does not mean I will let you expand the Gryffindor boys dormitory to fit your bed, you belong downstairs. No, that does not mean you can do this in the Ravenclaw dormitory instead. I said downstairs, Mr Tozier.”-Richie loves summer and his friends.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris
Comments: 19
Kudos: 161





	we live in the summer

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for references to abusive/toxic parents and general sonia kaspbrakness
> 
> i started this fic in response to a prompt that it no longer really fills all the way back in november! it was meant to be 1200 words at most, and now here we are, 18k later and it's finally, finally done, i hope you like this half as much as i enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> title from Josh Pyke's The Summer

Richie loves summer. 

When he’s four Mum and Dad take him to the seaside to visit his cousins and he gets to spend three weeks exploring rockpools, running as fast as he can into the almost warm ocean, screaming with laughter when the waves knock him down, and eating chips on the sand dunes. 

They take him every year after that. 

His uncle teaches him how to fish, but when he makes eye contact with the squirming whiting he’s trying to get off the hook he decides it’s not for him. His cousin Holly takes him to visit the mermaids that surface by the cliffs and he takes to mimicking their above-water screeches. He gets sunburnt, has to wear Dad’s too big t-shirts and stay indoors for what feels like forever. When his bright red skin blisters he torments anyone he can with the flakes he peels off. His memories all run together; he’s four, seven, nine, and always has sand caught in his clothes and that happily exhausted feeling he associates with a full day of fun. 

  
  
  


Then he turns eleven, and he’s almost disappointed when his parents take him to Diagon Alley to buy robes and books for school. Almost. But the feeling of warm, bright magic filling him up and channeling out through the second wand he tries in Ollivanders, and the thought of all the new places to explore and people to meet at Hogwarts overshadows the sadness of summer ending. 

He and Mum and Dad meet the Uris’ on the corner of their street so the six of them can Apparate onto Platform 9 and ¾. They arrive with twenty minutes to spare because Stanley likes to be early and everyone knows the only way to get Richie out of the house on time is to tell him they need to be somewhere at least half an hour before they actually need to be there. 

Richie and Stan, being the only two kids living on their block in wizarding London  — a community so small his mum is always comparing it to a village despite the barely there barrier between it and the huge sprawl of Muggle London — have been friends for as long as either of them can remember. 

Once they’ve said their goodbyes and stowed their luggage, they run back to the window for one last enormous wave. When they get back to their chosen compartment there are two boys hovering outside. One of them is the same height as Stan and Richie, and he offers them a small smile. The other is tiny. He drowns in his jumper, the sleeves covering his hands and the hem hanging almost to his knees, but he’s still, Richie notes, wearing shorts. 

“Is it al-alright if w-w-we join you?” the taller one asks, and five minutes later they’ve crammed the extra bags into the overhead shelves. Richie gives Stan a look that he hopes says something like  _ we’re keeping them, right?  _ Stan purses his lips and lets his mouth lift the tiniest bit, which Richie knows means  _ I think you’re ridiculous, but yes, these are definitely our new friends _ . 

Bill’s parents apparently went to Hogwarts around the same time as Mrs Uris and Richie’s Mum and Dad, but Eddie hadn’t known he was a wizard until a witch turned up at his house at the beginning of summer and explained all the weird things that always happened around him. 

“And she said that it was normal,  _ normal _ , that I never got lost, even in places I’ve never been before, and that I’d sometimes end up on top of buildings or up trees when the older kids at school used to chase me. She said it was magic. Mum told me I couldn’t go to a boarding school because it was too far away from her, but Professor McGonagall explained that it could actually make me sick if I tried to keep all my magic inside and didn’t learn how to control it, and —”

Richie can’t take his eyes off him, bouncing up and down on the seat, speaking so quickly his words seem to run together. And he keeps going, talking about anything with very little prompting. Eddie never seems to take a breath, doesn’t even pause when Richie calls him ‘shortstack’ and ‘half pint’, just curses him out and keeps going. Richie finds himself grinning. 

Maybe sometimes he likes autumn too. 

  
  
  


The Sorting Hat barely touches Bill or Eddie before announcing that they’re Gryffindors, and it spends a minute or so on Richie’s head  _ hmmm _ -ing about brains and ambition before booming, “Hufflepuff!”, but it takes forever to sort Stan. 

Richie waits, not wanting to worry too much, but also crossing his fingers under the table that the Hat won’t split them up, even if he knows that Stan isn’t very likely to end up wearing yellow and black. He can see Stan’s mouth moving, whispering something to the Hat. Richie knows that face too, it’s Stan’s ‘here is my logical and well thought out argument for why this should happen and how you are wrong’ face. Richie sees that face a lot. He may even be the reason Stan has that face in so many varying shades. 

“RAVENCLAW.”

Richie whoops even though he’s disappointed, and Stan catches his eye, grinning, as he walks to sit at the Ravenclaw table.

Richie spends dinner talking to Mike, another Hufflepuff first year. Richie sees his entire face light up when the food appears on the table and leans over to give him a high five, getting mashed potato down the front of his robes. 

“I knew magic was real,” Mike explains. “My Mum was a witch. But I’ve never really seen …”

Richie notes the ‘was’ and momentarily wishes Stan was the one having this conversation because his foot never ends up in his mouth like Richie’s does, and Richie’s mouth is already full of sausage. He swallows, and beams at Mike. “It’s awesome, right!?”

Mike beams back at him and Richie relaxes. Maybe he  _ can _ make friends on his own.

Stan squeezes in next to Richie when dessert appears. 

“Convinced you’re not one of the smart kids now, Stanley?” Richie asks, because he doesn’t want to let slip how nervous he is about going to the dorm alone tonight. He knows Mike now, a little, but still. New people don’t always get Richie. They like him well enough, he’s always been good at getting people to like him at first, but it was the  _ getting _ him that mattered, and after finding Bill and Eddie on the train he really didn’t want to push his luck today. Also, he has liked Stan longest and therefore best. But he’s not about to tell Stan that, he’d never let it go. 

Stan bumps his shoulder and rolls his eyes, both standard Dealing with Richie moves. “No, stupid. But I checked with one of the prefects and she said there aren’t technically any rules about eating at the other tables, even though the teachers like us to bond with our houses. So I figured, dinner with my house, dessert with my best friend.”

“Awwww Stannie, am I your best friend?” Richie beams and batts his eyelashes, draping himself across Stan’s body as best he can while they’re tucked up against the table. 

Stan rolls his eyes. He leans over the table, not getting anything on his robes, and shakes Mike’s hand. “I’m Stan. I’d apologise for Richie, but you’ve been sitting here for a while now, so he can’t have hidden what he’s like.”

“Mike,” says Mike, looking between Stan and Richie for a moment before going back to smiling his easy smile. “And no, you don’t need to apologise. Once he’d eaten mashed potato off his uniform I knew what I was in for.”

“I am gifted,” Richie acknowledges magnanimously, stealing some of Stan’s ice cream to go with his banoffee pie. He and Mike share stifled laughter over Stan’s retaliatory elbow and muttered curses, and Richie has another moment of thinking,  _ yeah, I’m keeping this one.  _

“Ugh, shut up and eat something, will you, Richard?” Stan says, but he’s smiling one of his good mood smiles, so Richie turns back to his pie, content.

  
  
  


After dinner he and Mike follow their prefects to the Hufflepuff Common Room. Richie’s walking backwards, waving madly at Bill and Eddie where they’re climbing the stairs, Stan and the Ravenclaw’s have already disappeared around the corner. Bill’s talking to a redhead who looks like she must be a first year too, but Eddie smiles and sends a small wave back. His eyes widen in alarm when Richie loses his footing, but Mike catches him before he can fall face first onto the stone floor.

“Thanks for the save, Mikey.”

Mike chuckles. “You’re welcome. You ate so much at dinner, I thought you might not have room for flagstones.”

Richie nearly trips again, this time with laughter, and they end up on the receiving end of an admonishing glare from an older student. Neither of them get a handle on their giggles. 

When they walk into the first year boys dormitory they’re followed by one other student. He’s round faced, and clearly nervous. Richie feels bad for the kid, not having made an excellent friend like Mike at dinner. He decides to rectify that for him immediately.

“Hiya,” he sticks his hand out, thinking his dad would be proud, then remembers his fingers are still probably sticky from pudding. “Oops, hang on a second.” He scrubs his hand against his robes, back and front just in case, then sticks it out again. “Sorry about that, professional hazard. I’m Richie, it’s a pleasure to meet you … ?”

“Um, Ben,” says Um Ben. He eyes Richie’s hand warily before shaking. “Professional hazard?”

“Yeah, I’m a professional dessert eater. Richie Tozier’s the name, dessert eating’s the game.”

Ben’s face glows when he smiles, red climbing high on his cheeks. But he snorts out a shy laugh, so Richie figures he hasn’t scared him off just yet. 

Mike nudges Richie out of the way so he can introduce himself and shake Ben’s hand too.

They get settled in their beds fairly quickly, exhausted from the day of travel and all the newness of Hogwarts. Richie’s brain is going to take a little while to slow down, he bets the other two will be snoring before he shuts it off. 

“Goodnight,” Ben whispers on Richie’s left. 

“Goodnight,” Mike whispers back, from Richie’s right.

“Boys, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Richie says into the dark, and he’s rewarded with two sleepy chuckles. 

  
  
  
  
  


Richie is supposed to meet Beverly Marsh in his second ever class at Hogwarts. Instead he meets her on a staircase as it swings away from the fourth floor landing they were aiming for. 

“What the f- ?” she squeals, arm flinging out to grab hold of the side. “How?”

“I’m guessing magic isn’t the answer you’re looking for,” Richie says, clinging tight to the other side. 

She blows her fringe out of her eyes, and levels Richie with a look. 

“Sorry, sorry, I’m enjoying this about as much as you are. I promised my parents I wouldn’t be late to any classes for at least a week, and I haven’t even made it past Monday. I mean, they’ll understand why, I’m pretty sure they met on a moving staircase. Or maybe it was one of the trick stairs that like, sucks your legs in and won’t let go, I don’t remember,” Richie rambles. 

The staircase connects with another fourth floor landing that probably leads to the completely wrong side of the castle. The jolt of it sends them both sprawling, quills and bits of parchment spilling out of their bags. 

“Did your parents go to Hogwarts?” she asks, once they’ve righted themselves. 

“Oh, yeah. Mum was a Gryffindor like you actually.” Richie nods to the red and gold tie around her neck.

She smiles, warmer than she’s been since they’re accidental adventure began. “That’s cool. I wish I’d known more about Hogwarts before coming. Mostly I was just excited to, um. I was excited to be somewhere new, I guess. And,” she stops. Richie’s about to jump headfirst into the silence, but before he can she shakes herself, clenches her jaw and looks him in the eye. “And I want to know what my mum’s life was like. She died a long time ago. But I’m pretty sure she was a witch.”

“You don’t know?” Richie asks, shocked.

“My dad doesn’t really talk about her.” She looks away, sets off down the corridor, and Richie races to catch up. 

“If you, if you wanted to find out, we could ask around. Look in old year books in the library or something?”

The girl stops, her grip whiteknuckle tight on her book bag. She turns around and smiles, small and hesitant, growing bigger when Richie returns it. 

“Yeah. I’d like that.” 

They stand in the corridor, grinning at each other, until a teacher sticks her head out of a classroom and asks what they think they’re doing, loitering like reprobates. They exchange wide eyed looks and run off in what Richie hopes is the direction of McGonagall’s First Year Transfiguration classroom. 

“Miss Marsh, Mr Tozier,” Professor McGonagall’s sharp voice greets them when they finally sneak in. “You’re late. Fortunately for you, it is your first day and your classmates have saved you some seats near the front.”

They duck their heads, and walk past Bill and Eddie on one side of the room, and Ben and Mike on the other, until they reach the desk at the very front, right under McGonagall’s nose. 

“As I was saying … ” 

Richie ignores McGonagall and turns back to the girl. 

“I’m Richie, by the way. What do I call you? Miss Marsh? Ginger?”

“Bev’s fine,” Bev says, managing to roll her eyes and grin at the same time. “Nice to meet you, Mr Tozier.”

  
  
  


“This is Bev, she’s cool, say hi to Bev, Badger Boys,” Richie crows, slinging his arms around Mike and Ben’s shoulders. They had stopped to wait for him after class, and, as luck would have it, so had Bill and Eddie. Or maybe they were waiting for Bev. Either way, it suited Richie’s purposes just fine. 

Richie’s purposes being Getting Everyone Together and Making Them Friends. 

“Morning Eddie, morning Bill, how did you both sleep? How was your first night in the castle? Did you enjoy the way food just miraculously appears on your plates? What did I miss when I was late to class,” Eddie says, in what Richie guesses someone else might call a good Richie Voice, but he won’t give Eds the satisfaction. When Richie just stares at him, eyebrow raised, Eddie huffs. “This is how normal people might start a conversation. Were you raised in a barn?”

Before Richie can formulate a response to that amazing opening volley, Mike steps in. 

“I guess you must be the Gryffindors Richie met on the train. I’m Mike.” 

“I-I-I’m Bill.”

“Eddie.”

“Beverly,” Bev smiles at Mike. “But call me Bev. Honestly I don’t know why I gave my full name, it makes me sound like somebody’s grandmother.” She turns to Ben. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Oh, hi. I’m, um,” he flounders and looks at Mike and Richie for help. Richie mouths ‘Ben’ at him. “I’m Ben.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you Ben,” Bev grins at him. 

They wander after the steady stream of students, all following the siren call of lunch down to the Great Hall. 

Richie falls into step with Eddie. “So, Eds.” 

“It’s Eddie.”

“Eds,” Richie insists just so he can watch Eddie scrunch up his nose. “What’s this about me being born in a barn?”

The ensuing conversation takes them all the way to the end of the Hufflepuff table, where Eddie cuts himself off from an entertaining tirade about the mistreatment of horses and possibly something to do with the royal family, Richie was mostly following the slicing of his hands through the air. 

“I guess,” Eddie looks around at their friends, who have also come to an abrupt halt. “I guess we should head over to the Gryffindor table?” He looks at Bill, who shrugs. 

“Or,” Richie wheedles, “you could sit with us.”

“Isn’t that against the rules? You might be okay getting in trouble on your first day, but I’m not,” Eddie says. 

There’s a small, throat clearing cough from behind them, and Richie beams when he turns around to see Stanley with his eyebrows raised. 

“Every time I see you now you’ve found more friends. You’re not bribing them are you?” He turns to the others, “he’s not bribing you is he?” 

“Hello Stanley, how are you this fine afternoon?” He thinks he hears Eddie mutter something like  _ so, you use manners for Stanley _ , but he can’t be sure.

“Fine, thank you,” Stan says, smiling, small. “And there aren’t any rules about house tables for meals, I checked last night. If you want to eat with this muppet, be my guest.” Stan settles himself in at the Hufflepuff table like he hasn’t just implied eating with Richie was a fate worse than death. 

The thing is, they do. They all pile in around Stan, elbows banging and bags getting dropped on unsuspecting laps and loud conversations, and Richie decides, mouth full of pasty, that this is the only way to eat.

  
  
  


The summer after his first year at Hogwarts Richie mopes around the flat for a week, missing his friends but not sure how to reach out. It’s easy when you share a bedroom with two of them, have classes with more, and then there’s homework you can be doing for those classes you have together, and they’re already right there in front of you when you suggest raiding the kitchens or exploring the Forbidden Forest, or loitering at Quidditch practices because it’s as close as you’ll get to the game as first years and you want to practice commentating with different voices. But it’s summer and that means he has to  _ write _ . And they said they would, all seven of them promised each other before they left Kings Cross. It’s been a week and no one has. 

Richie is aware that he also hasn’t written, but that is not his point. His point is that, well, he kind of loses track of his point, but his friends haven’t written and he is Bored with a capital B.

He is ready to work himself up into a real funk, when a well groomed barn owl taps at his window startling him out of his thoughts. The neat script on the envelope is instantly recognisable.

_ Dear Richie,  _

_ You spent the last few weeks keeping us up late talking about all the things we were going to do this summer and now you won’t even answer your door?  _

_ We all promised to write, but as it’s been six days since we arrived back in London and I haven’t heard from you I assume you are being your usual dramatic self. In fact, I think if I knocked on your door this afternoon your luggage would not even be unpacked (including all your socks from last term, which is gross Richie, it’s just gross) and you would be lying on your bed listening to something depressing and wearing yesterday’s t-shirt.  _

_ If you prove me wrong you can come to Diagon Alley with Bill and I. Mum is taking us, so your parents don’t have to worry about you getting into more trouble than usual. _

_ Shower, get dressed, empty your suitcase. You have an hour and a half. _

_ Love, _

_ Stanley _

That afternoon , after unpacking a year’s worth of clothes and textbooks and scraps of parchment and bits and pieces of Things he had deemed important enough to keep when he had been packing but realises now he could probably throw away, Richie discovers that not only do he and Stan live on the same street, but Bill only lives a short bus ride away. 

“How could you not know that?” Stan asks, incredulous, when Richie starts getting excited about being neighbours. “He told us that months ago.”

Richie shrugs, attempting to exchange a look with Bill, who just grins and shakes his head as if to say  _ come on Richie _ , which, Rude. “I dunno, Staniel. I don’t listen to everything you say. I learned to tune you out when we were five.”

Stan rolls his eyes, but Richie can tell he’s trying not to laugh. You could tell these things about a person when you’d known them most of your life, and Richie had known Stan for as long as he could remember. And he might be laughing  _ at _ him, but it’s still better than nothing. 

The three of them spend a few hours in Quality Quidditch Supplies and Flourish and Blotts, and then outside the Owl Emporium, Stan communing with the dozing birds, Richie and Bill pulling faces, before Mrs Uris meets them back at the Leaky Cauldron and buys them dinner. 

After that Richie gets better at writing. He writes to Mike on his grandfather’s farm up north, and Ben, at his parent’s house in Bristol. He writes to Bev and Eddie and sends theirs by Muggle post, like they’d asked, and makes sure not to include too many details about magic, just in case. He writes to Bill most weeks after he and Georgie leave to visit their grandparents’ in Wales. They all write back, and he even gets to see Ben a couple of times when he comes across to London with his dad. 

Richie even writes to Stan, five doors down the street, and smiles big enough to hurt his cheeks when Stan’s replies come fifteen minutes later. 

But it’s the end of that summer he likes best, when all seven of them organise to pick up their school supplies on the same day, supervised by his mum, who is not too embarrassing because she’s on her best behaviour. She buys them all double scoops of ice cream and convinces Eddie’s mum to let him sleepover on the last night before school goes back, and Richie is forced to admit that Maggie Tozier is actually pretty cool. 

He and Eddie stay up until they physically cannot keep their eyes open, pouring over their combined collections of Muggle and Wizarding comics. The next day they fall asleep on the train before it leaves the outskirts of London, and Richie doesn’t even mind the crick in his neck or the mouthful of Eddie-hair he wakes up with. 

  
  
  


Now he’s sixteen, and summer means no classes, no professors constantly watching their every move. No stupid rules about going back to separate common rooms, and “please, Mr Tozier, for the last time, just because it’s impressive magic does not mean I will let you expand the Gryffindor boys dormitory to fit your bed, you belong downstairs. No, that does not mean you can do this in the Ravenclaw dormitory instead. I said  _ downstairs _ , Mr Tozier.”

And most summers since the end of their second year the seven of them have managed to convince their various adults that weeks long hang outs are necessary. They’ve had four years of extended sleepovers. One of Bill’s more brilliant ideas. 

They mainly bounce between Richie’s and Bill’s, because they have the most extra space for sleeping bags on the floor. It helps that the aunt Bev moved in with two years back is her mother’s sister  —  a witch who works in the same mind-numbingly boring department at the Ministry as Stan’s mum  — so Bev is allowed to spend her days,  and some nights,  with the boys. Helps that Ben’s Muggle mother doesn’t know what to do with him now he brings home spellbooks and dreams of building integrated cities, technology and magic working together. That Mike’s grandfather is just happy that Mike has friends he wants to spend his summer with. So happy that he hired extra help for the family farm and asked only that Mike came home on weekends. Sometimes the seven of them tag along with Mike; get the train up and help out around the place during the day, spend their nights in the fields, stargazing and drinking pilfered firewhiskey.

He loves those nights, without any watchful eyes. He makes up stories about constellations that would make his Astronomy professor blush, but they make Bev and Eddie cry with laughter and that’s always been Richie’s goal. And when they all crawl into sleeping bags in one of the barns, Eddie always shuffles closer, keeps talking until the only sign they’re not alone is the quiet breathing of their friends. 

Mostly though, Richie is glad Eddie’s mum knows nothing about magic, and nothing about Eddie’s friends, beyond what he tells her, because from what Richie has heard over the years, Mrs K would not approve. He’s pretty sure she wouldn’t let him out of her sight if she wasn’t a little afraid of what Eddie’s capable of with a wand and no misguided loyalty to her. As it is, she only lets him stay in London if he calls every night.

When Richie and his mum had driven out to pick Eddie up that first sleepover summer, Richie had been told that under no circumstances was he to leave the car. 

“But Mum, he’s my best friend and I haven’t seen him in  _ forever _ .” Richie had pouted and crossed his arms, slunk low in his seat and glared, tried everything that usually made Maggie cave with a chuckle. But she didn’t back down.

“It’s been four days since I picked you up from the station, Mr Dramatic. And if she’s as afraid of our world and magic as you say, she’s not going to take a liking to you at all kid,” Maggie said, leaning back through the open window. She’d been right, of course. Richie had been wearing a t-shirt with a magically moving logo, his hair was, as always, untamed and half standing on end. He sulked, but stayed in the car.

Maggie’s own Muggle childhood, her smart slacks and clean blouse, and her calming primary teacher voice had done the trick though. Ten minutes later he and Eddie had been bickering and giggling and shout-singing in the backseat all the way down to London.

  
  
  


So yeah, Richie usually fucking loves summer. He gets to spend it doing nothing and everything with his favourite people. Last year they mapped out the whole of wizarding London following Ben’s directions, eating too much ice cream, laughing loud enough to draw looks from strangers, traipsing home at the end of the day with arms full of obscure books that Mike just  _ had _ to read, staying up too late and climbing onto Bill’s roof to smoke and watch the sunrise. 

Bev had been really into photography the last year or so, and she had taken shots of them all dressed up in the most ridiculous outfits they could find in the charity shop. She took photos of them all the time, actually. The developed photos were divided up between them, some making their way back to Hogwarts dorms, but most of them ending up on bedroom walls. 

Richie, lying on his bed, can easily glance up at the photos Bev let him keep. There are about a dozen of them on the wall beside his bed. Mike and Richie snoozing either side of Bev on a picnic rug, her arms stretched up to take the picture. Ben and Richie bent over a table, Richie’s tongue caught between his teeth as he tried to figure out how to explain the spell he knew would bring Ben’s map to life. The back of Richie’s head, his first match in the commentator’s box at Hogwarts, jumping up and down and cheering as Bill flew past him. He’d got an earful about the neutrality required in Quidditch commentary, and he’d almost got a detention for pointing out that he was a Hufflepuff cheering on the Gryffindor Chaser which was surely a demonstration of inter-house unity to be celebrated. 

His eyes catch on the photo closest to him. 

They’re arranged randomly on the wall, designed to look like he didn’t think about placement at all, but this photo is the only one he can see when he takes his glasses off before bed. It’s him and Eddie by the Black Lake at Hogwarts. 

He didn’t know Bev had taken it at the time. She’d just slipped it in with the other photos he’d chosen with a wink. It was taken after the Christmas break, because Eddie’s wearing the beanie and scarf Bill had given him, even though he’d cast a warming spell before daring to sit with Richie in the snow. Richie is on the ground because he’d fallen trying to climb one of the trees at the edge of the lake. His beanie has fallen off and he’s lying like he’s been making snow angels, limbs akimbo, his head in Eddie’s lap. Eddie’s taken his gloves off and is running his fingers through Richie’s hair to brush the snowflakes out, and his mouth is moving a mile a minute. His eyes are bright, and even though Richie can’t remember what they were talking about he knows Eddie has just been laughing. Photo Richie’s eyes are shut and he’s smiling small, the smile he knows must be the one he wears when he’s feeling dopey and too in love with his best friend. 

The photo makes him feel too many things at once, but he almost hasn’t stopped looking at it since Bev gave it to him. 

Now it just reminds him why this summer is shaping up to be his worst summer ever. He flops over on his bed, reaching out for the envelope on his bedside table. 

The note had come the night before, delivered by Richie’s own owl, Eris, after he’d sent her to find out why Eddie hadn’t met them at the station. They’d waited close to two hours, at least two of them at their meeting spot while the others roamed for food and entertainment, before deciding to pack it in. 

The letter’s shorter than any Eddie has ever sent. Dashed off, his handwriting getting smaller and tighter as the message goes on.  _ Don’t know if I’ll make it this year. Sorry, E.  _

Richie can’t picture what made Eddie write so quickly he didn’t even have time to sign his full name. He’s never properly met Eddie’s mum, though he’s seen her glaring at him from a distance at King’s Cross the last few years. Ben’s the only one who has and Eddie insists it’s for the best, insists she’s just frightened of all the magic, but Richie can see the way he makes himself small when she’s around. 

Eddie’s still short, but he’s never been small. Not to Richie. Not at Hogwarts, not around their friends. He’s all quick movements and words that tumble into each other, as brave as his house suggests. He stands toe to toe with bullies and Richie’s seen him laugh his way through half a dozen curses that Bowers and his gang have sent their way. But next to his mum he shrinks in, talks softly, doesn’t make eye contact and hustles them all onto the train before he’ll hug them. 

He insisted, when Bev asked last year, that she doesn’t hurt him. That she isn’t like Bev’s dad. But there’s more than one way to hurt someone. 

Richie has never said it to Eddie, though he’s sure he’s guessed, but Richie really and truly fucking hates Sonia Kaspbrak. 

Before he can go too far down that niffler hole there is a knock on his bedroom door. He groans, heaving himself into an upright position. Whoever is on the other side of the door clearly takes his groan to mean  _ won’t you please come in _ , because he doesn’t have the chance to grab his wand to wave it open before the lock clicks from the outside. It can only be one of six people then, not even Maggie and Went can unlock his door without tripping some of the wards. Richie likes his privacy. 

“Exactly where I thought you’d be.”

It’s Stan. His friends are entirely too predictable. When Richie’s in a funk they’ll mostly let Eddie deal with him, but Eddie isn’t here so of course it would be Stan or Bev. It makes sense, he guesses. Eddie is the one most able to get him to talk or distract him, and to know which one of those he needs. Bev and Stan are the least likely to take his shit or let him dodge his problems. 

Bill used to come get him, sometimes. But ever since the incident that had seen Eddie and Ben in the hospital wing and Bev rubbing a salve that gets rid of bruises onto Richie’s black eye, that situation has been avoided at all costs.

Stan shuts the door quietly behind himself. “You’re so predictable Richie.” Which,  _ pot, kettle _ .

Richie shrugs, propping himself up against the headboard, finally looking at Stan. When he doesn’t elaborate Stan starts to look concerned. He perches on the end of Richie’s bed, hands wrapped around his knees. Classic upset Stan pose. Richie immediately feels guilty. 

“Maybe not entirely predictable,” Stan amends, picking at his jeans. “What’s up with you? Everyone’s at mine, we were thinking we’d go see a movie or something, but - ”

“Shit, I completely forgot!” And he’s not even lying. Once the letter arrived every plan he’d made had left his head. 

Richie tries to throw himself off his bed, but Stan’s in the way and they both end up struggling to keep themselves from hitting the floor. 

“Bloody hell, Richie, warn me before you try to kill me next time.”

Richie waves his hands uselessly around Stan, like he can magically unruffle his clothes and hair quicker than Stan can right himself. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Stan huffs, but seems to take Richie’s changed mood at face value. He wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrist and tugs him out the door without any further chastising, so Richie figures he’s pretty much forgiven. 

The rest of their friends  — sans Eddie, which is really very obvious when they’re all together because he’s loud enough that they can always find him in a crowd regardless of how short he is — are milling around the Uris’ hallway when Stan and Richie arrive. They all spill out onto the street as soon as Stan opens the door. 

In the last year or so Richie, Mike and Ben have shot up so quickly there was a query from Madame Pomfrey about misuse of Potions, although that may just have been on Richie’s part now that he’s thinking about it. But the growth spurts and the suddenly elongated limbs make it difficult to fit in spaces they used to coexist in quite comfortably, and so there had been a lot of draping over each other and spilling out of places in recent months. Ben had even charmed the big couch in their common room to expand a little. They were close enough that tangled arms and legs were never an issue, but there had been an afternoon when they were wedged so tight, shoulder to shoulder and up against the couch arms, that they’d had to get a second year to tug one of them free. 

Bev and Bill are in the middle of a reasonably relaxed discussion of the merits of going to the cinema vs. going to the park and stopping off for ice cream when Richie finally tunes in. It’s only relaxed and reasonable because he hasn’t been around to wind anyone up and Eddie hasn’t been here to take the bait, but Bill seems to be the last hold out in favour of seeing the newly released  _ Batman Returns _ . 

“We have  _ all summer _ to see movies,” Bev is saying in her most convincing manner. It involves a lot of smiling while she talks and pouting while you talk, and it works on most of them, most of the time. “It’s not even that hot today, we don’t need to sit inside. We’ve been cooped up all year.”

“Cooped up? Was there a weekend we didn’t spend sneaking out to Hogsmeade or into the Forest? Where’s Eddie?” Bill spins around and then around again, like he just missed Eddie on the first go round their lopsided circle and he’ll appear for certain if he looks hard enough. They don’t remind Eddie of it, or maybe they don’t remind him often, but if he’s not talking they can lose him in crowds on account of his general lack of height. “He’s the one who told me about it in the first place. It’s a superhero movie, he’ll back me up.” 

“Eds isn’t coming,” Richie says and Bill’s face falls comically. He widens his eyes beseechingly at Richie, sticks out his bottom lip. It’s taken a good five years, but that face no longer works on him. Much. “Nope, sorry bud. I’m with Bev. I’ve been lying on my bed for going on forty eight hours now, I’m ready to get stuck halfway up a tree and wait for Ben to come and rescue me again.” Richie reaches out and squeezes Ben’s bicep, batting his eyelashes, tipping forward like he’s going to fall. Ben, good sport that he is, catches Richie and dips him like they’re dancing. Bill continues to pout.

“Hanlon, deal with this baby. He’s bumming me out,” Bev says turning her back on Bill. She tickles Richie until he squirms and quickly takes his place in Ben’s arms. Kudos where kudos is due, Bev knows what she wants and Richie would bet all the galleons he has to his name that Ben is going to sweep her off her feet any day now.  _ This is your summer, Haystack _ , Richie thinks in his general direction,  _ go for it _ . 

Mike chuckles when Bill tucks himself into his side with his dramatic sulk face on full blast. “I promise I’ll go to the cinema with you, I’ll buy the popcorn and everything, but I’m really invested in watching Richie cling to a branch like an overgrown sloth.”

Richie squawks and they all laugh and it almost, almost, feels like the real beginning of summer. They wander across town to St James’ Park — a favourite of Stan’s ever since he read  _ Good Omens _ — jostling each other and falling over themselves laughing and he wonders if summers are like Christmas and birthdays. Does he only have a finite number left before he turns into his dad, who insists he only started enjoying them again after Richie was born and he could relive his childhood vicariously? 

Bill hooks his finger through Richie’s belt loops, literally dragging him back into the conversation, which has moved past movies and onto the plausibility of them becoming Animagi. He snorts, shaking his head. There’s no way this time of year, with these people, will ever be boring. 

“Are you telling me anyone but Mikey could hold a mandrake leaf in their mouth for a whole month without swallowing it?” Richie asks. Stan’s face does something funny. “Okay, maybe Stanley and Ben in a good month, but seriously if you think the rest of us are going to be able to cross that hurdle, you’re crazy.”

“You don’t think you’re projecting a little there, Rich?” Stan asks, his lips curled up in a tiny side smile. It’s one of Richie’s favourite Stan-smiles. 

“Sorry, who’s top in Transfiguration? I could definitely become an Animagus, no problem. I’m talking about you lot.”

“You sh-sure are talking,” Bill grins. “Talking enough to swallow just about anything that isn’t your actual t-tongue.”

Richie gets him in a headlock and refuses to let him go until he catches the distant sound of an ice cream van. 

He feels a little off balance once he has vanilla soft serve dripping down his cone and a Flake in his mouth. It isn’t that the ice cream isn’t delicious, it’s just … Eddie’s usually the one who pays for his ice cream. Richie buys their chips, Eddie buys their ice cream. It’s their thing. 

He’s sixteen and eating ice cream in the park with his friends, he isn’t going to mope. It just sucks that Eds isn’t here, is all. And he might be a little worried, but he’s trying not dwell on that.

  
  
  


They’re on their way back to Stan’s when Bill grabs his attention again. He waits for the others to walk ahead, pitching his voice low so they can’t hear. 

“You’re p-pretty good at h-h-hiding things, Richie, but you’ve been off all day. Do you think something’s wrong, with Eddie?” 

Richie looks over at him. Bill is many things, Quidditch captain and Chaser extraordinaire, frequent contributor to the write-in section of The Quibbler, speaker of Welsh and stalker of Hogwarts ghosts, one of Richie’s favourite people, but he is first and foremost a big brother. Richie knows that he can tell Bill anything right now and he’ll be taken seriously. He won’t assume Richie’s blowing this out of proportion. And once Bill’s on board there’ll be a plan that no one can stop. So Richie takes a moment. 

He thinks about everything Eddie has and hasn’t said about his mum in the last six years, and the E at the end of the note. Eddie is usually painfully neat when he writes. Richie’s teased him about it more than once, and he always gets eye rolls and “well, yeah, idiot, if I wrote as fast as you do no one would be able to read my handwriting either, one of us has to be legible” in return. Every letter he’s ever written Richie has finished,  _ love Eddie _ . Richie knows. He’s kept them all. 

“I don’t know, Billy.” Richie feels his throat close as he lets in a little bit of the fear and shuts it down hard. “I don’t think it’s  _ bad _ bad, but he’s never not given an explanation, a very long winded explanation at that. I don’t necessarily trust my gut, but my gut is nervous.” 

Bill takes a step back, because he’s had enough experience with Richie’s nervous gut over the years to take it seriously. “Bad enough we should go get him?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Alright.” Bill sets his shoulders, pulls himself up to his full height, which might not be much comparatively, but they don’t call him Big Bill for nothing, that posture is impressive. “Alright. Let’s go get him.”

  
  
  


It isn’t quite as simple as that, of course. There’s the question of how they’re going to get there (brooms, because they don’t have enough Muggle money between them for the train tickets), and who gets to go (Richie, because there’s no way it’s happening without him, Bill, because it’s his plan and Richie can’t fly that far on his own without seriously injuring himself, and Bev, because if Eddie’s mum has locked up his broom and he needs to ride tandem she’s the only one he’ll trust). 

Then there’s the question of what the others will need to do in London to prepare for Eddie’s arrival.

“Why can’t we just say he had to stay home the extra day with his mum?” Richie asks “Our parents were expecting him to show up at some point anyway. Besides, there are so many of us I’m sure they won’t even notice.”

“Yeah, because Eddie’s known for being a wallflower,” Mike says, and if he wasn’t being funny at Richie’s expense, Richie would laugh. 

“Besides, Eddie is Maggie’s favourite son, there’s no way she won’t notice him living in your bedroom.”

“You know what, Hanscom — ”

“What?” Ben grins at him.

“You’re not wrong. Okay, so someone needs to tell our parents, but maybe wait until we’re well out of London. I don’t want to get there to find Maggie’s Apparated into Mrs K’s kitchen to give her a piece of her mind.”

“And I guess one of us should tidy your room,” Stan says. 

“What? Why do you need to tidy my room? My room’s plenty tidy. My clothes are all folded and everything.”

“Oh, well,” Stan says, rolling his eyes. “If you’ve folded your clothes … ”

“Boys, please. Get Eddie now, argue about the cleanliness of Richie’s room later,” Bev says. And really, Richie couldn’t have put it better himself. 

Bev mounts her broom and Mike taps his wand on her head. Richie tries to watch her kick off from the ground, but as the spell takes hold his eyes slide off her. Once Richie has his arms secured tight around Bill’s middle Mike performs the spell on them too, and Richie feels the familiar trickle of the charm slipping over his body, erasing him from his friends’ sight. 

  
  
  


As his street disappears below him, and his friends become specks in the distance and then nothing at all, Richie can no longer ignore the fact that he is flying. Richie fucking hates flying. 

Hate might be too strong a word. Richie deeply,  _ deeply, _ fears flying. He was alright in their lessons in first year, when he could see the ground and survive the fall, and he didn’t mind playing two a side Quidditch at Mike’s place last summer, when there wasn’t any speed or urgency and no city to fall down into. The flight to Eddie’s isn’t even that long. But the wind roars in Richie’s ears, so loud he can’t talk to Bill, and all he has to focus on are his own circular thoughts. 

_ What if we’re too late and she’s whisked him off somewhere and we never find him? What if she’s snapped his wand like she threatened to do after she got her hands on his  _ Daily Prophet  _ subscription and learned about werewolves? What if we never see him again? What if he’s okay and I’ve made a big deal out of nothing and he really just doesn’t want to see us? Doesn’t want to see me? No, that’s stupid. He’s my best friend. I’m his best friend. People don’t go from hugging at a station and saying “shut up idiot, we’re going to see each other in a week” to radio silence and a disappearing act. Certainly not people who are Eddie. Oh shit, we are up so high right now, do not look down, do not look down, close your eyes Tozier, Merlin’s sake. _

He clings tight to Bill, presses his face into his back and tries to think happy thoughts about, like, pixie dust and whatever else it takes to fly in fantasy stories where kids never fall out of the sky to their gory deaths. 

“Richie. Rich _ ie _ .” Bev’s voice sing-songs at him. 

Wait. Bev’s voice. He can hear Bev. He peels his face off Bill’s back, which is somehow both sweaty and cold, and squints out from behind very smudgy glasses. They’re on the ground,  in a lane behind a church. 

“There he is,” Bev’s smiling at him, but he can see her worry in the set of her jaw. This is Bev in battle mode. “Welcome back to Earth, Boy Wonder. Did you enjoy your flight?”

He sticks his tongue out at her. “You know I did fucking not, thanks ever so much Miss Marsh.”

“Come on, R-r-richie, hop off.” Bill pats Richie’s hands where they’re still vice-like against his stomach. 

Richie pulls back, flexing his fingers, trying to get the feeling back. 

“Now, here’s something we didn’t think about before we left,” he says, looking around them. “How do we go about finding his street?”

“Well,” Bill says, in his most reasonable voice. “We know the name of his street. What else do we know about where he lives?”

“You mean besides the hellbeast prison guard?”

Bill gives him a Look. “Yes, Richie, b-besides the prison guard?”

“He lives near a park, right?” Bev prompts, her arms full of sticks, bent over and fossicking around the churchyard for more. He’s not sure what she’s doing, but she’s doing it with purpose. “Won’t you recognise the house once we get there?”

“Um, yeah,” Richie says, watching her curiously. “But it’s a really long road, and I don’t know if you know this about me, but I do not have the world’s longest, most dedicated attention span. I don’t really pay attention to how we get from A to B, I just notice when we get there. I know he used to feed the ducks there when he was little. I think he still does, when he wants to get out of the house.”

Bev gestures for Bill to pass his broom over, and when he does it gets shuffled into the mix of sticks too. In fact, now it just looks like a bundle of sticks. Satisfied with her handiwork she passes the bundle to Richie and brushes her hands off on her overalls.

“That’s cute. I can see Eddie feeding the ducks. I bet he talks to them.”

“Yeah, he’s a regular fairytale prince, Beverly. Am I supposed to do anything with this, or …?”

“Yes, you’re carrying it for me. Much less suspicious than walking around with two old fashioned broomsticks.”

Richie isn’t sure about that, but nothing he could say will convince her otherwise at this point, so he goes with it.

She links her arm with his, grabs Bill’s hand, and tugs them down the lane and out onto the street. “So, we ask for directions to Montrose Avenue, find his house near the park, then try and get his attention. Maybe we can set off sparks or something?”

“I d-d-don’t know about that. This is the l-least magical place I’ve e-ever been. I can feel it. It’s like it’s empty. Richie and I can’t do magic here, they’d know it was underage magic, and s-sp-sparks draw too much attention. We’ll figure it out when we get there. Anything else w-we know, about his house?”

Richie thinks. He thinks back over everything Eddie has ever mentioned about home. It’s not much, really. He doesn’t like talking about it, and while Richie lives to push his buttons, this isn’t one that leads to a cherry red face and intense gesticulation. More often than not it leaves Eddie quiet and withdrawn, and Richie’s always been in favour of an Eddie that lights up and pushes back. 

“I’ve never been inside, but I’m pretty sure he can see the park from his bedroom window?”

If Richie had been paying more attention to Eddie’s words during that Herbology lesson maybe he’d know for sure. Instead he’d been watching the morning sun turn Eddie’s hair golden and trying to figure out how best to sneak the giant earthworm he’d found in Hagrid’s pumpkin patch into Eddie’s pot without him noticing. That had been a great class actually. Eddie’s screech and subsequent griping had been worth the 10 points Sprout had docked him.

“He used to talk about watching the forest from your dormitory window at night. He said it was an upgrade from the park back home.”

“That’s enough to work with,” Bev insists. She squeezes Richie’s elbow. He’s so glad she’s here. “Let’s go get our boy.”

  
  
  


Walking through town, Richie can’t believe Eddie grew up here. Everything is muted. The bricks are grey-yellow-brown, the houses that have any semblance of a lawn wouldn’t be exaggerating for thinking the grass was greener literally anywhere else, the expressions on the faces of the few people walking purposefully through the streets are grey-grey-grey. He hasn’t spent any time here before, not long enough to look properly. Just ten minutes the last four summers, waiting in the car while his mum went up the path and convinced Sonia Kaspbrak to part with her son for a few days.

Bill’s right. There’s no magic here. Nothing like the predominantly Muggle village his grandparents live in, nothing like Muggle London. It’s like a dead zone. His magic itches under his skin, worrying at him like it doesn’t want to be forgotten. 

He doesn’t know how a place like this could produce Eddie. He really doesn’t know how Eds comes back every year. At least there’s only one year left. Next summer they’ll be seventeen and recently graduated, and living with their friends in whatever dodgy flat they can afford. 

“Oh, I do not like this place at all,” Bev says, echoing Richie’s thoughts. 

“Neither do I,” Bill says. “Hang on, I’ll be right b-back.”

He crosses the road to talk to an old man and his Westie, dropping into a squat to scratch behind the dog’s ears. The man points in the direction they’ve been walking, talking Bill’s ear off from the look of it. Bev pulls a packet of cigarettes out of the front pocket of her overalls, and they share one waiting for Bill to extricate himself. 

“Follow me,” Bill says, when he makes his way back over. “Bernard says it’s not far.”

“Oh, Bernard does, does he?”

“Beep beep Richie.”

  
  
  


The park, once they find it, is the nicest thing they’ve seen since they landed. 

“Oh, it’s so much bigger than I was expecting,” Bev says. “No wonder Eddie likes it here.”

People are feeding the ducks, the sun is glinting on the rippling surface of the water, and Richie even spots kids attempting to get a kite off the ground. 

“I don’t think we’re going to need to do anything drastic to get his attention.”

“What do you mean?” Bill asks. Richie nods to the house across the street, two in from the corner, facade familiar from previous summers spent staring at it waiting for Eddie to appear. There’s a figure in the second floor window, chin propped in his hands, watching the park. 

Richie lobs the stick-and-broom bundle to Bill, who fumbles it and glares, but Richie doesn’t care. He starts jumping up and down, waving his arms as huge and wide as he can, and trying, for once in his life, to keep it as quiet as possible so as not to alert any unsuspecting mothers of soon to be jailbroken teenagers. 

Bev joins him, and they’re both giggling and dancing and jumping like lunatics. Bill joins in, waving one arm and nearly poking his own eyes out with the sticks, and it’s worth the looks they start getting from the people leaving the park for the look on Eddie’s face when he notices them. 

If Richie wasn’t already pretty sure he was in love with him, that beautiful, overwhelmed, bright toothy beam would have confirmed it. _ Holy shit _ . It’s only been a week. There’s not enough space inside of his body to hold all his feelings, no wonder they’re always spilling out everywhere. He wants to yell, but he has to satisfy himself with pulling stupid faces and sticking his tongue out, which gets a ridiculous Eddie-face in response and his heart migrates to his throat. 

Eventually the three of them settle, chests heaving, grinning like loons. 

Eddie mouths something at them and huffs exaggeratedly when none of them can interpret what he’s trying to convey. He looks behind him. Even from the other side of the street Richie can tell he’s nervous.

Eddie holds up a hand, as if to say  _ wait there _ . He disappears from the window, but he isn’t gone long. He waves them closer, so he must have gone to check if his mum was anywhere near the front of the house. Not that it would matter. The blinds on the downstairs windows have been pulled down every time Richie’s been here. 

They wait for what feels like an hour for Eddie to slowly, slowly, ever so fucking slowly open the window. And then his head is hanging out of it and they are so close. If he has to use the wand in his back pocket, Richie is getting Eddie out of here today. 

“What the fuck are you three doing here?” Eddie whispers, sounding a little too amazed for Richie’s liking.

“Rescuing you, of course,” Bev whispers back, almost at the same time that Richie, rolling his eyes, says, “Where the fuck else would we be, dipshit?”

“I am so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Eddie says it directly to Richie, and Richie kind of wants to cry. 

“What the hell are you sorry for?” he asks, voice rising. Bill stamps hard on his foot, and Eddie darts a nervous look back into the house. 

“Shhh, she’s asleep in front of the telly, let’s keep it that way,” Eddie hisses, which is a step up from his near weepy voice from before. “I’m sorry I didn’t show, at the station the other day. I wanted to be there with you. I was getting ready to leave when Ma came upstairs and started going on about me staying home for the summer. She started talking about how glad she was I only had one more year at that heathen school and then I’d have learned enough magic to keep myself safe and I could come back and live with her, and well, that sounded fucking horrific. I’m not living here again full time, not now I know what it’s like to live literally anywhere else. Not after all these years at Hogwarts and all our summers. I just.” He looks angry, frustrated, Richie can’t see Eddie’s hands but he’s sure they’re in fists at his side. He looks a little bit desperate too. Richie gets it, he feels a little bit desperate. “I’m not giving up magic. Or you guys. We’re going to find a flat, right?”

“Yeah, Eds. Of course. We’re going to find a flat, and I’m going to annoy the hell out of you every single day. I promise. School’s great and all, but I’m ready to just start living our lives, you know?” Richie’s voice cracks.

Eddie’s eyes are huge and dangerously soft. Richie can’t look away.

Bev slips her hand into Richie’s and he startles. He’d kind of embarrassingly forgotten she and Bill were there. She squeezes tight, shoots him a determined smile when he catches her eye. 

“Do you have everything you need in your room, Eddie?” she asks. 

Eddie clears his throat. “Um, no. She took all my books and robes, she took my whole trunk. I don’t know where it is, she’s locked me in my room. She has my broom too.”

“Fuck this shit,” Richie takes a step towards the front door, but he’s stopped by four hands and a whispered, “Richie, don’t.”

“Don’t? She’s got you locked up like a prisoner, Eddie.” He feels sick about it. What if they hadn’t come?

Bill puts a hand over Richie’s mouth, and there’s a not insignificant part of RIchie that is tempted to lick it because he is who he is, even in times of crisis and emotional distress. 

“Eddie,” Bill whispers. “Do you have your wand?”

Eddie nods. “Yeah, I hid it under my floorboards. Only reason I haven’t used it’s because Luton is marginally more pleasant than Azkaban.”

“Good, good. That’s really all you need for now. We can lend you books, I’m sure we can do something about second hand robes, another broom  — ”

“Or Mags and Went’ll storm down here tomorrow and magic them away for you.”

“Or that,” Bill concedes. “But Eddie, if you want to, we can get you out now. We’ve got two brooms, and the others are making up a bed for you at Richie’s. Do you want to come back to London with us?” 

Eddie looks down at them all like he still can’t quite believe this is happening. He blinks a lot, tries to disguise his sniffling, but Richie can see the hope creep into his eyes. 

“Really?” he breathes. 

All three of them nod, enthusiastically. “Really.”

“What if she calls the cops? I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me.”

“You’re practically an adult!” 

“Not according to Muggle law,” Bev says gently. 

Richie turns to look at her, to say he doesn’t care about Muggle law, Eddie isn’t a Muggle so it shouldn’t apply and fuck’s sake, doesn’t she understand that they need to get him out. Bev’s shoulder’s are still set though, and her eyes are steely. Richie swallows all the words back down so they can sit heavy and guilty in his stomach.  _ It’s Bev, idiot _ , he chastises himself,  _ she’d be the last person to give up. _

“I don’t care if she calls the cops, Eddie. I’m not leaving without you,” Richie says firmly, because apparently when faced with Eddie literally locked up he can’t help but spill his stupid feelings all over himself. 

“Okay, let me just grab my wand and some clothes. I’ll be quick.”

He leaves the window open, and Richie is grateful because he’s pretty sure that’s the only reason Bev restricts herself to eyebrow gymnastics and a silent ‘Oh my God, Richie’. He knows alright, it’s a miracle Eddie doesn’t — he hopes Eddie doesn’t,  _ oh bloody hell, what if Eddie does? _ Well, at least he can rest easy in the fact that Billy Boy clearly doesn’t, or at the very least is more respectful of Richie’s poor, tender heart than Beverly. He’s currently inspecting the overgrown flower bed in front of them like it contains the secrets of the universe. 

“Hey, Bill?” All Richie receives to confirm he has Bill’s attention is a vague  _ hmm _ . “Whatcha doin’?”

“Counting ladybirds.”

Richie looks at Bev. She’s grinning closed mouthed, all the better to swallow her laugh. 

“Cool, cool,” Richie says, barely keeping the laugh out of his own voice. This day keeps bouncing between high stakes and emotional drama, and complete inanity, might as well keep going with it.

All three of them startle when a sound comes from above them, but it’s just Eddie clearing his throat. 

He’s got his backpack on, double strapped because he’s always about preventing back, neck and shoulder pain, and he’s put a jumper on. It’s still warm out, but given how cold their flight was earlier in the afternoon, Richie just knows he and Bill and Bev will cop an earful about night air when they’re back in London. 

“Ready to go, Spaghetti?”

Eddie responds with an eye roll and a nod, which is about as much as Richie expected. 

Bev draws her wand out and performs three Disillusionment charms. Her’s are not quite as skillful as Mike’s, the rap of her wand is harder, and the slick cold feeling that runs from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet leaves him a little on edge. 

Richie mounts the broom behind the feeling of Bill’s body and begins holding on for dear life immediately. He ignores Bill’s patronising huff, and watches as Bev’s broomstick and the wobbly, out of focus Bev shape float steady next to Eddie’s window. Eddie frowns with the concentration it requires to mount a broom mid-flight. The deep lines in his forehead come so naturally, Richie knows them like the knicks on the back of his own knuckles, not always there but often just about to appear. He thinks  _ I’m going to make your life so crazy happy those lines never become permanent, it’s laughter lines all the way Spaghetti, _ and then he kind of wants to throw up. Partly from the enormity of the feeling, but mostly because he’s allergic to that much sincerity. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

He gets one last look at Eddie’s determined face before he’s fading out of focus too. Then Bev’s broom dips with extra weight, Bill is saying, “I’d say hold tight, but,” and the wind is rushing, rushing, rushing around them again. 

Somewhere over the Edgeware road, Richie hears a whoop that gets caught by the wind and pulled away, back north. He grins into Bill’s t-shirt. Tips his head back and howls. Eddie lets another whoop fly out and then they’re playing call and response, all four of them hooting and hollering and laughing, only scraps of noise lingering long enough to hear. 

_ Thank Merlin, Helga, Morgana, Godric, God, the Doctor, literally anyone who could possibly be considered to have had a hand in this,  _ Richie thinks.  _ Thank you, thank you, thank you.  _

  
  
  


They land in Richie’s backyard around 7.30, all four of them shaking off the tingly feeling of flying through the Tozier’s wards. They’ve stripped them of the Disillusionment, Richie notices absently when he peels open his eyes and can see Bill’s neck. 

“I cannot believe the three of you flew, FLEW, dozens of miles without jumpers. What were you thinking, you must be half frozen. Richie and Bill I understand, but Beverly what were you thinking, were you thinking at oomph — ” Eddie’s tirade is cut off when Bev drops the broom and spins around in his arms to hug the daylights out of him. 

He pats her on the back, and when he realises he’s not going to be released any time soon, leans into the hug, pressing his cheek to her shoulder and squeezing back. 

Bill and Richie dismount and throw themselves into the mix. Richie finds himself with his nose pressed in behind Eddie’s ear, and it should be a little weird, but all he can think is  _ he’s here _ . They really did it. They went and got him. He’d been locked in his room at least two and a half days, but Eddie’s here. In London. In Richie’s backyard.  _ He’s here, and you’re not, he’s with us, so you can suck a dick Mrs K, but it sure as hell won’t be mine.  _

There’s a yell behind them, from the direction of the back door, and then Ben, Mike and Stan are colliding with them and they go down like so many bowling pins. Bev’s giggles float around them like bubbles, and Mike’s laugh is warm, reverberating against Richie’s back, and Bill’s knee is jammed into Richie’s stomach, and Eddie is swearing like a sailor and laughing until he’s gasping, and they’re all going to be grass-stained and bruised in the morning, and Richie doesn’t care. 

Well, he cares a little when the back door opens again and his mum’s voice reaches the bottom of the garden. 

“Richard Wentworth Tozier, I see your trainers at the bottom of that pile. I know you’re there.”

Richie pulls his head out from under Ben’s arm and readjusts his glasses. “Mother.”

“Don’t ‘Mother’ me,” Maggie sighs, hands on her hips, stern expression turning soft as she looks down at them all. “Get up here, and explain to me why you thought this was your only course of action, would you please?”

The seven of them struggle to their feet, and Richie leaves his friends to loiter awkwardly while he drags himself up the path to stand before his mum. 

She has her hair pulled back with a big yellow scrunchy, a tea towel over her shoulder, and what looks like flour dusted all over her. The top of her head barely reaches his chin these days, but he’s still not been this nervous about a talking-to since he was nine and accidentally on purpose set off a whole lot of Filibuster Fireworks inside the house. 

“Mum,” Richie starts, but she shakes her head. 

Looking behind him at the others, she beckons them inside. “Bev, Bill, I’m not sure what your plans are, but Stanley said you’d be staying at his place with Ben and Mike. It’s up to you of course, you know you’re always welcome here. There’s more than enough space.”

“Thanks Maggie, but if it’s alright with Stan’s parents I think we’ll stay there. We left our things there this morning.”

His mum nods, smiling. She’s always had a soft spot for Bev. “Well, I’m sure we’ll see you all soon,” she says in a tone that means,  _ now please leave so I can speak to my son _ . 

Bev smiles politely, but when Maggie turns to lead them out, she grimaces at him. Richie shakes his head. It’s not like he wasn’t expecting this when Stan insisted they tell his parents they didn’t just find Eddie at the station just a little delayed. 

Bev grabs Ben’s hand and tugs him out the door, Mike and Bill both hug Eddie again before following. Stan leaves last, mouthing ‘sorry’ at Richie. 

Eddie makes for the door too, hands gripping the straps of his backpack as he edges his way around Maggie. 

“Eddie, you’re welcome to go to the Uris’. Andrea assures me you’re more than welcome. But there are a few things we’d like to talk to you about — all good things!” she assures him when Eddie looks sick. “And then, if you’d like to stay here for tea, or for as long as you like, there’s a bed made up in Richie’s room. Is that okay with you?”

Eddie, who always seems to freeze up when adults ask for his opinion, takes a moment before nodding, small, like he’ll take it back if it’s the wrong answer. When he gets nothing but a smile in return he nods more firmly.

“I’d like that. Thank you, Mrs Tozier.”

“Wonderful,” Maggie says, shutting the front door. “And please, Eddie, how many years have I known you? Call me Maggie.” She hovers in the hallway. Richie watches her study Eddie’s face. Then, carefully, trying not to startle him and giving him all the time he’d need to back off, she hugs him. “It’s so good to have you here, sweetheart.”

Eddie’s hands shake a little as he lifts them up to rest them on her back. 

Maggie pulls back, smile bright. “Now, why don’t you go up to Richie’s room and settle in. I’ll call you both down when the food’s ready.”

They make it to the foot of the stairs before the other shoe drops like an afterthought. “Actually, Richie, honey. Can I grab a hand in the kitchen for a minute?”

Richie groans. Eddie hesitates, one step above him, but Richie waves him on. 

“Go on, I’ve got this. I did run off to kidnap you without talking to her first, the least I can do is apologise.”

“Are you sure?” Eddie asks, biting his lip. Richie has to force himself not focus on Eddie’s mouth.

“Course I’m sure. The most recent edition of  _ The Quibbler _ is on my bed, if you get bored waiting for me.”

Eddie’s face lights up. He’s always had a fascination with the magazine that Richie doesn’t understand. Richie thinks it’s hilarious, of course, but because he’d been raised with magic, he knew what was real and what wasn’t — most of the time, anyway. But Eddie had nearly choked on his toast laughing one morning reading about Crumpled Horn Snorkacks and it had become one of his favourites. 

“What? When did you get that? I thought you cancelled your subscription in protest after Bill stopped taking your suggestions when naming fake interviewees for his pieces.”

Richie grins at him. “Blagged it off Herbert Fleet on the train on the way home, didn’t I?”

“And you didn’t tell me!?” Eddie’s voice climbs, but he’s smiling for the first time since Maggie opened the back door. “You’re on your own with your mum now, loser.”

Richie stands at the bottom of the stairs, listening to Eddie laugh all the way up. Then he sighs and drags himself to the kitchen. 

“I’m sorry, alright,” he says as soon as he’s in there. “I’m sorry for rescuing my best friend from his house arrest, but his mum is nuts. Like properly certifiable. She locked him in his bedroom and she’s threatened to snap his wand before, and I was worried so I left without waiting for you to get home, but I’m sorry, okay.”

He’s a little winded when he finishes, and his mum’s eyebrows have just about reached her hairline. 

“You’re not in trouble — ”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffs.

Maggie holds up a hand. “You’re  _ not in trouble _ for going and fetching Eddie. For goodness sake, Richie, who do you think I am? I’m not going to punish you for getting Eddie out of there. If I’d known, I’d have done it myself. Which, incidentally,  _ is _ why you’re in trouble. You are sixteen, or have you forgotten? You’re not allowed to perform magic outside of this house or Hogwarts. What in Morgana’s name made you think that flying a broomstick to Luton and back in broad daylight was a good idea?”

Richie opens his mouth. 

“No. I’m not done. Next time, not that there’s going to be a next time, because Eddie is not going back to that house or that woman unless he absolutely wants to, and even then there will be a contingency plan, but Richie, honey, please tell me that if you had to do this over you would tell me? And trust that I’d come up with a plan that would not result in a missing person’s case?”

“Sorry, Mum.” Richie tries to leave it at that, but he just can’t. “But I couldn’t wait for you to get home from work. We couldn’t leave him there.”

“Oh, Richie,” she sighs, tucking a curl behind his ear. “I know, sweetheart. And I’m very proud to be your mum. Your heart’s so big, and it’s absolutely in the right place. I just need you to promise me you’ll give your brain a chance to catch up. Or, should I say, commonsense. I know it’s in there. Let them both into the decision making process. Please? For the sake of your poor old Mum?”

“Margaret, darling,” he says in the toffiest voice he can muster. “You don’t look a day over twenty-seven.”

“Oh to be twenty-seven and have an eighteen month old who can’t leave the house without me, let alone the city,” she says wistfully, hand over her heart.

She can’t quite wrap him in her arms like she used to, when he was small enough to fit under her chin and her hugs made most of his problems go away, but she tries anyway, tugging him into her and squeezing the air from his lungs. 

When she pulls back her eyes are shining. She pats him on the cheek, turning away swiftly. “Right. You go check in on Eddie, and I’ll finish cooking. I baked a cake today, Richard. You know how I hate to stress bake, but you’re going to have to suffer through it after dinner.”

Richie has a moment, an out of body experience, when he listens to his mum dramatically recount Ben’s attempts to help her bake her stress away, while Mike and Stan sat at the table with mugs of tea, gawking.  _ Bloody hell, that’s what I look like _ .  _ That’s what they see when I do it. _

Maggie, unaware of Richie’s revelation that he may have inherited more than just his good looks and poor eyesight from his parents, continues to natter as she moves around the kitchen. “You can have tea in your room, if you’d like. Just tonight, mind. I’m not setting some wacky new precedent where you don’t ever need to sit at the table with your parents. Went! Can you come help me with this sauce,” she calls, and Richie backs out of the kitchen, shaking his head.

  
  
  


Eddie isn’t flipping through the new copy of  _ The Quibbler _ when Richie walks into his bedroom. He’s lying on his back on the bed. He sits up straight when Richie shuts the door behind him, biting his lip. 

“You okay, Eds? You get through the whole magazine that quickly?”

“I decided to wait for you,” Eddie says primly. “Are you okay? You didn’t get in too much trouble because of me, did you?”

“Nah. Mum and Dad are … I think they’re mostly just disappointed I didn’t tell them. The way Mags tells it, they’d have stormed up there themselves, wands at the ready.”

Eddie collapses back onto the bed with an enormous sigh. 

“Wow.” He turns to look at Richie, eyes wide and serious. “Your parents are … I can’t believe that. They’re really not mad at me, you, I mean, well … ” he trails off. 

Richie wants to hug him. He doesn’t really know how else to reassure Eddie that setting everything aside, even if his parents were furious with him for taking off and maybe, kinda breaking the law a little, they would rather have Eddie here than in that house. 

He kicks his shoes off and crawls onto the bed beside Eddie, sitting up with his back to the headboard, his knees drawn up to his chin, arms wrapped around them. From this angle, Eddie can definitely see straight up his nose. 

“Eds. I’m going to say this one more time and then it’s back to fart jokes and dick jokes twenty four seven, okay?” 

Eddie smiles like he knows Richie’s lying, which is rude, but also makes Richie feel some kind of way thinking about how Eddie knows him better than most people. Better than Stan and his parents even, which is actually a little bit scary. 

He rolls onto his side, head propped up on his hand, smirking like he’s trying to hold back laughter. “Okay, Rich, hit me.”

He takes a deep breath. “Oh you are absolutely too cute, there is no way anyone can be mad at you. I mean, look at this face,” he pokes Eddie’s cheeks and nose and eyebrows and chin. “Too cute.” Eddie rolls his eyes, goes to turn away, but Richie keeps a hold of his chin. “Seriously, Eds. Eddie Spaghetti. Edster. Eduardo. Is Eduardo something? Should Eduardo be a thing?”

“Absolutely not.” The laughter is bursting at Eddie’s seams now. 

“Eduardo, listen to me. No one is mad at you. We don’t want you to be anywhere else. You make your own choices, and you can be wherever you want to be, but we want you here.” His next words lodge themselves sideways in his throat, but he’d say it to any of the others if the situation was different. It just wouldn’t mean quite the same. “I want you here. If that’s alright with you?”

Eddie nods. There’s something huge sitting on Richie’s chest and it only grows watching Eddie’s face. He looks like he’s holding back tears. 

“I want to be here.”

“Good, because we have plans, Eds. Big plans. Summer plans and then Seventh Year plans and after that, life plans. We’ve got so many things to do, we have to start immediately.”

“Is that true, or are you just talking?” Eddie asks, digging his toes into Richie’s leg. 

“Ouch, shithead,” Richie laughs, kicking back. “It’s true. You know it’s true.”

“I don’t know, we talk about getting a flat together, but sometimes I think. How many people are still best friends with their school friends when they’re adults?”

“Loads, if they went to Hogwarts. Magical Britain’s so tiny it could fit in your luggage, you really think we’re not going to be best friends for the rest of our lives? I’ll take that bet.”

“You won’t get sick of me?” Eddie asks, a little too intent to be joking. 

Richie can’t help it, he laughs, and ends up with another jab in the leg for his troubles. “Sick of you? No chance, Eddie. No chance. The seven of us are going to live together, and Bill’s going to keep writing his stories, and Ben’s going to design cities, and Mike and Stan are going to go to university, and Bev’s going to get to do something with her designs, and you’re going to make the fastest, safest brooms that I might one day actually ride, and I’m going to be on the radio, and if anything you’re going to get sick of me. But you sure as shit won’t get rid of me.”

There’s something in the way Eddie’s looking at him right now — mouth open just a little, eyes huge — that makes Richie want to run away, lock himself in the cupboard under the stairs and never come out again, but he never wants to move. 

There’s a knock on the door and the moment’s broken. Eddie scrambles up so he’s sitting with his back to the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, hooked under the triangle of Richie’s own. 

Richie tugs his wand out of his pocket to lift the wards. Eddie’s eyebrows do the scrunched up caterpillar thing they do when he’s mad about a new way Richie has found to be stupid, and whispers something like, “fucking precarious wand storage”, but he doesn’t kick off. Mostly because it’s Richie’s dad who comes through the door, and Eddie is always disgustingly well behaved around Richie’s parents. 

His dad walks in with a tray carrying two bowls of pasta and a plate of garlic bread. At Richie’s little happy dance, Went grins, “Your mum and I figured comfort food might be in order? How’re we doing in here, boys?”

They mumble out a combined, “fine” and “good thanks, Mr Tozier”, because no matter how cool Richie’s parents are being about the whole situation they are still parents. 

“Wow, the enthusiasm in here, it’s too much.”

Richie rolls his eyes and Eddie jabs him in the stomach. 

“Yeah, okay, I promise I’m going to leave you to it. First though, I wanted to have a conversation with you about how the rest of the summer’s going to unfold, Eddie.”

Eddie goes stiff, his left hand, mostly hidden from Went’s view by Richie’s suddenly conveniently long legs, wraps around Richie’s ankle and holds on tight. Richie wishes he could do something more. Then he thinks  _ fuck it _ . He’s seen Went do emotionally compromising things when comforting people he cares about. His dad isn’t above proper hugs with more contact than two manly wallops between the shoulder blades. He’s seen his dad cry and hold his brother’s hand at their mum’s funeral. What’s he going to do, judge Richie for being there for his friend? 

Richie sneaks his hand across the quilt and wraps it around Eddie’s. Eddie doesn’t blink, doesn’t look at Richie, just tangles their fingers together and squeezes. 

“It really isn’t anything bad, I promise,” Went says, making his way over to Richie’s desk. He puts the tray down and pulls the chair out, settling in. “We know some people who work for the DMLE, that’s the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, though you probably know that after the number of careers flyers you boys had to go through last year. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, you’re supposed to let me know when I do that. They were made aware this evening of a potential missing sixteen year old wizard by local police officers. 

Now there are procedures in place for magical children of non-magical parents who aren’t … supportive. A Muggle liaison officer was dispatched to your mother’s house as soon as you arrived here, and she was made aware of your safety. Seeing as you’re sixteen, and not actually missing, the Ministry just needs to ensure you’re living with competent guardians until you go back to Hogwarts. You’ll turn seventeen during the year and then it doesn’t matter what your mother or the Ministry want, you’ll be an adult and well within your rights to make your own decisions. So, we’ll have the paperwork tomorrow — it really does pay to have connections — and if everything’s in order, and you’re happy with the arrangement, you’ll be under our care for the next month or so.”

Went leaned forwards, hands spread as if to say  _ what do you think of that? _ Richie didn’t quite know what to think, except  _ she actually called the police, she really thought that anyone in their right mind would hear ‘my sixteen year old son left the house after I locked him in his bedroom’ and think she wasn’t at least a little bit at fault _ . He looks at Eddie, who is still not moving, still not talking, still looking just beyond the tops of Richie’s knees, but is gripping Richie’s hand so tight he’s going to lose feeling. Richie rubs his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles, clears his throat. 

Eddie looks up. “Um, what does that mean, under your care?”

Went doesn’t seem surprised by the question. “Nothing too strenuous. Same as if you were here with us under normal summer circumstances really. You eat here and sleep here, if you get in trouble you come to me or Maggie, you both let us know where you’re going and when you’ll most likely be home. You do the reading you need to do for your NEWT classes, and we’ll help you with any questions you have, point you in the right direction if we don’t know the answers. You spend time with your friends.”

“So, you’re not … adopting him, or anything,” Richie asks, suddenly quite desperate to know the answer.

Went chuckles. “Merlin, no. He’s sixteen and going back to school in a month, he doesn’t need legal guardians, just people who promise to look out for him. Regular, non-legal guardians. Does all that sound okay to you, Eddie?”

“Yes. That’s, really? That’s great. If you’re sure, you know,” Eddie stumbles. He clears his throat. “You don’t mind?”

“‘Course not,” Went replies immediately, and Eddie relaxes his grip on Richie’s hand. “We love having you around. Besides, that was the plan originally, now there’s just a bit of paper making it official.” 

Once Eddie has thanked him profusely for a third time, a plan has been made to retrieve Eddie’s things when Went and Maggie have time on the weekend, and Eddie has had his offer to get a summer job and pay rent thoroughly rebuffed, Richie’s dad finally leaves with a reminder to eat their food before it gets cold, as though the bowls don’t have self-warming charms on them. 

They sit side by side on Richie’s bed to eat, so close that Eddie keeps elbowing Richie with every mouthful, the only sounds the occasional scraping of forks on crockery and Eddie’s enthusiastic chewing. 

Richie, as usual, is the one to break the silence. “Slow down there, Kaspbrak. You don’t want to die deepthroating pasta. I wouldn’t be able to keep your secret, I’d carve it into your tombstone. Here lies Spaghedward, he loved himself a little too hard.”

He gets cut off by another elbow to the gut, deliberate this time, but at least Eddie’s biting his lip to hold back laughter. 

Richie wiggles his eyebrows at him, really tries to get them moving, and that finally breaks him. Eddie ends up bent over his bowl, threatening to stab Richie with his fork if he gets a stitch, but the menace gets lost in his wheezing giggles. 

Eddie always laughs hardest at Richie’s worst jokes. It continues to be the skill Richie is proudest of — and he can cast a sonorous charm strong enough his Quidditch commentary can be heard from Dufftown, so that’s saying something. 

Richie laughs too, of course. It’s hard not to. Eddie’s laughter is contagious, especially like this, with his head thrown back, unrestrained, and Richie’s ribs and cheeks are aching by the time they quiet down. He ends up leaning into Eddie’s space, crying with it. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, propping each other up, and Eddie, a little dopey as he comes down from the giggle high, rests his head on Richie’s shoulder, his face pressed into Richie’s neck. 

Richie tries to get his heart rate under control. The traitorous organ is beating out his secrets against Eddie’s cheek, and Eddie will know, Eddie will be able to tell from the way the rhythm stutters and stumbles. He’ll hear the truth:  _ you’re here, you’re here, you’re here, I love you, I love you, I love you. _

Eddie sighs sleepily, his breath warm on Richie’s neck, snuggling closer. They both curl together naturally, there’s no other way for Richie to contort himself but towards Eddie, he’s like a sunflower following the light and warmth, and they slip down the pillows until they’re almost horizontal. 

When Eddie yawns — his mouth opening wide and closing against Richie’s neck in a way that makes him shiver — Richie tips his head down to look at him. Eddie’s eyes are closed, his mouth soft, lifting up just a smidge in the corner, and there’s a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. Before he can stop himself Richie’s reaching his thumb up, smoothing it out. Eddie smiles, presses closer. 

“I don’t understand how I can be this ti-i-ired,” he yawns, tangling his legs with Richie’s. His hand has slipped down to settle over Richie’s ribs. “I’ve done nothing all week except watch EastEnders and Coronation Street with Ma, and then sit in my room and do more nothing.” He yawns again. Richie tightens his arms around Eddie’s waist. He thinks back to the last time he had Eddie in his arms, at Kings Cross, and wishes he’d convinced him to stay then. “Did you know she tapes all the episodes? She made me watch all these old ones so I could understand the new episodes, like I was actually paying attention or something.” Richie hmms in acknowledgment, happy not to interrupt yet, just keep listening to Eddie’s voice. “And I kept thinking, the only time these shows are bearable are when we watch them at Bill’s with his mum, you know? And she doesn’t mind when we point out how ludicrous the storylines are, or when you start doing Voices over the top of the dialogue, because she knows they’re a bit shit and she’s just watching them for a laugh. To be fair though, anything is bearable with you around. You make everything more fun.”

Spontaneous human combustion has always been something that fascinated him, but Richie thinks, right now, he might actually be about to experience it. His whole body is on fire, everywhere Eddie’s touching him, and Eddie thinks anything is bearable with him there. Did he mean Richie you or the Losers you? Either way, Richie’s included. He’ll take it. 

“Aw, gee Spaghetti Man,” he blusters, hoping Eddie doesn’t open his eyes and see how red he is. “You know I — ” 

Eddie puts his hand over his mouth, glaring up at Richie with only one eye open. “Do not make a joke right now, I’m being serious.” He pushes himself up, palm down on Richie’s chest, and Richie couldn’t look away even if he wanted to, not when both of Eddie’s eyes are open and bright and this focused on Richie. “I’m trying to … I don’t know what I’d do without … ” he takes a deep breath. “I want to be serious, Richie.”

Richie swallows, nods. Eddie’s eyes catch on Richie’s throat. He swallows again, his mouth is dry. “Yeah, Eds. I can see that. Serious as a heart attack.”

“Well, okay then. Good. Um … ” Eddie trails off, eyes focused on Richie’s mouth now, or maybe that’s just Richie’s imagination. It’s probably Richie’s imagination. But Eddie seems to have lost his train of thought, or maybe his nerve, but Richie doubts that. At the very least, he’ll find it again soon. Eddie’s always been the brave one. Richie just kind of tags along for the ride. Eddie seems to come to some sort of decision. “I’m going to, um, get into my pyjamas. Clean my teeth. Then, we’ll talk some more?”

Richie nods again, not doing much in the way of helping Eddie untangle their limbs, but not holding him back either. 

Eddie grabs his backpack and leaves for the bathroom. 

Richie collapses back on his bed, heart stuck somewhere between 100mph and wholly and completely still, lodged in his throat or dead in his chest. 

He looks up at the photo of himself and Eddie in the snow.  _ You can do this. You can be serious. You can tell him. He deserves to know _ . Richie’s known that for a while now, if he’s honest with himself. Eddie deserves to know just how much room he takes up in Richie’s heart, how much space Richie wants him to take up in his life. They’ve only got a year left of school, and it feels like forever, but Richie meant what he said earlier, outside Eddie’s house. He’s ready for real life to start if it means nights like this, eating dinner and talking and getting tangled up in each other. He’s ready if it means time spent with his friends, building their lives together. 

  
  
  


Eddie comes back from the bathroom wearing the same clothes he’s been in since Richie first spotted him in his window earlier. 

He sighs in response to Richie’s raised eyebrow. “I packed quickly, okay. I forgot my pyjamas. Just add that to the list of things I’ll owe someone money for, I guess.” He drags his fingers through his hair. 

“You can borrow some of mine.”

“What?”

“I mean,” Richie says. “I don’t have any matching sets in Gryffindor red or anything.” 

“Shut up,” Eddie blushes. “Not all my pyjamas are red.”

“I’ve seen you in pjs enough to know that’s not true. I have some boxers and t-shirts spare, you can grab whatever you want out of the top drawer,” he points in the direction of his wardrobe. “I’ll just, uh,” he jabs his thumb over his shoulder, “give you some space.”

Richie grabs his own pyjamas — a faded Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt and his Kenmare Kestrels boxers — and almost runs to the bathroom. 

He knocks his knee into the vanity trying to get changed as fast as he can. Eddie will give him hell when the bruise appears. He brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face.

Gripping the sides of the basin hard, he gives himself a stern lecture. “You have done scarier things than this. It’s Eddie. The worst thing that’ll happen is a few awkward days where he sleeps in the guest room or at Stanley’s or Bill’s, because he’s Eddie and he won’t hate you. You can let him talk first, say whatever seriously scary thing he wants, but you are not going to sleep without saying it.”

Then he has to brush his teeth again because he throws up a little, but that’s between him and the mirror and nobody else will ever know.

  
  
  


Richie knocks, just in case it takes Eddie longer to put pjs on than it does for Richie to have an entire breakdown, but Eddie’s always been quick, so he gets a soft, “come in dipshit, it’s your bedroom.”

“Just checking you’re decent, Eds,” RIchie says before promptly swallowing his tongue. 

Eddie is clothed, yes. But decent? Well, Richie reasons, by anyone else’s standards he probably is. There’s something about seeing Eddie swimming in a Kestrels pyjama top, one that’s a little too big for Richie when he wears it, that sends Richie’s brain into meltdown. It’s falling off Eddie’s shoulder it’s so big on him. It’s covering any evidence of shorts underneath. Richie can see the freckles on his shoulder. Richie stares at them.

“Do not,” Eddie says, glare at full force, hand coming up to swipe at the air. “Do  _ not  _ fucking laugh at me.”

Richie shakes his head, dragging his eyes up to Eddie’s face. “Who’s laughing, Eds?”

“I mean it Richie. It’s not my fault you’re a fucking giant or something. Is that the secret to all… ?” Eddie waves his hand around, seeming to indicate the entirety of Richie. 

“Are you asking if I’m part giant?” Richie asks, choking out a laugh, but Eddie’s already moved on. 

“Because it’s honestly ridiculous. You know that right? There is so much of you. How am I supposed to fit in your clothes when you’re all bean poley, and now that your shoulders are starting to … ” He cuts himself off, face so red there’s almost steam coming off it. 

“Starting to what?”

“You know,” Eddie says, red and steaming and looking intently at Richie’s left ear. “They’re all…  _ you know _ .” He jiggles his hands around.

“What?” Richie asks, smiling now, but still very much confused. He has no idea what’s happening, but Eddie’s neck is starting to turn red too and he can’t look away. 

“Ugh,” Eddie throws his hands in the air. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You’re impossible.”

“Eddie!” Richie can’t keep the incredulous laughter out of his voice. “I haven’t done anything. I don’t know what’s supposed to be happening here, but I can’t help my shoulders, they just are.”

Eddie mutters something Richie misses, but he does catch the  _ pfft _ and the not so casual second look at his shoulders. If what he thinks is happening, is happening. Well, he doesn’t really have the words yet, but he’s sure he’ll find some. 

Eddie’s doubling down on his pretend anger, huffing and throwing himself back onto Richie’s bed. Richie’s having flashbacks to being twelve or thirteen and unable to name the feeling that came any time Eddie did, well, anything. He’d poked and prodded and stirred the pot even more then than he does now, followed Eddie around like a lost puppy desperate for attention and chanting  _ cute cute cute _ . That’s what he wants to do now, with Eddie in his clothes, legs and arms crossed like a little pretzel, pouting and fighting a losing battle with his own smile.  _ Cute cute cute _ . 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says, letting his mouth run faster than his brain and actively cheering it on for once. Eddie looks up at him, finally letting himself smile. “You look cute in my pyjamas.”

Not exactly what he thought would come out, but that’s what happens when he lets his mouth drive. It’s the right sentiment though. 

Eddie’s forehead crinkles, but he’s still smiling. “What?”

“Yeah, um. You look cute, in my pyjamas. I mean, you look cute in pretty much anything. I’m pretty sure you could wear those over-frilled dress robes like the wizard in that portrait outside the library, you know the one, and you’d still look cute. You could wear, I dunno, rags or something, and you’d look cute. But you look … how many times have I said cute? I’m just going to stop talking. Stop smiling at me like that, it’s not helping!”

The smile on Eddie’s face is very distracting and is definitely contributing to the word vomit that’s currently dragging itself out of Richie’s mouth. It’s the kind of smile that says  _ I’m laughing at you, but don’t worry, it’s fond.  _

“No, don’t stop!” Eddie’s giggles are back, and that’s even cuter and Richie is really going to need this to work out, because he’s going to say it, he won’t be able to help himself. “Keep rambling about how cute I am.”

“Eddie,” Richie whines. 

Eddie rolls his eyes. He’s still smiling though, when he gets off the bed and crosses the bedroom to stand a foot away from Richie. 

“What, you big baby? Do I have to say it? Are you going to make me say it first? Because I’ll say it, I meant it before when I said I wanted to have a serious talk.” He takes a deep breath, stands almost tall in front of Richie, and the determination in his eyes makes Richie a little weak at the knees. Not that he’ll ever admit that. “And maybe you’ve already said it,” Eddie says, mostly to himself. “I mean, you flew out to rescue me from my mother’s house.”

Richie reaches for Eddie’s hand. They’ve held hands more this evening than they have in years. Richie can remember the last time they held hands. It had been the first time they’d all gone into the Forbidden Forest, and he and Eddie had stuck together, shoulder to shoulder, the whole time. He’s always braver when he’s holding Eddie’s hand.

“You’ve never needed anyone to rescue you, Spaghetti. You’d have found a way out of there yourself. I’m just clingy, I needed my summer Eddie time.” 

“I mean, we’re all a little codependent, Rich. But I know it was your idea to come get me. I sent you the most cryptic note of all time and you knew I needed you and you came. And every single one of your plans for the future seems to include me, and — ”

“‘Course they do. Who else do I want to — ”

Eddie covers Richie’s mouth with his hand. “No, stop it, I’m having a revelation. I’m going to say it first this time. We are sixteen. There is no way I should be able to feel this  _ much _ , but I do. And it scares me a little bit, because Richie, we’re only sixteen. But if you say I’m not getting rid of you, I’m just going to have to believe you.”

“Eds,” Richie whispers into Eddie’s palm. 

“I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay?” Eddie says, taking his hand away from Richie’s mouth and stepping closer, right up into Richie’s space. 

Richie nods. 

Kissing Eddie is not, it turns out, very difficult at all. Richie’s never kissed anyone else, except Ben once, when they were both tipsy and pining after two Gryffindor Quidditch champions who were getting a lot of attention at the centre of the common room from people who weren’t them, but that didn’t count because they’d both wanted to kiss someone else. And now Richie’s kissing his someone else, and it’s just easy. 

Their height different is starting to leave a crick in his neck, and neither of them know what they’re doing so there’s more angle adjustment than he thinks there maybe will be once they’ve practiced a bit, and he can feel his glasses digging into his cheeks, but he’s kissing Eddie, and Eddie’s kissing him, and one of Eddie’s hands is in his hair and the other is wrapped around his neck, and all he can feel is Eddie and nothing else matters. 

He pulls Eddie closer, his own hands around Eddie’s waist, and he feels Eddie smile against his mouth. Laughter bubbles up inside him and he pulls back a bit, presses two more kisses to Eddie’s lips when he makes a soft grumpy noise, then rests their foreheads together so he can laugh properly. 

“You alright there?” Eddie asks, grinning. He stands on his tiptoes and kisses Richie again. 

“Wow,” Richie breathes.

Eddie snorts. “That all you got, Tozier?” 

“Well, excuse me. The boy I’ve been in love with since I was twelve just kissed me, I’m going to need a second before I’m more eloquent than ‘wow’.”

Eddie pulls back this time, not away or out of Richie’s arms which is nice. Just far enough that he can look Richie in the eye properly. “Wow,” he says, and Richie snorts. 

“What?”

“You’re in love with me.” Eddie says it like it’s news, and Richie guesses it must be. He hasn’t said it tonight. Hasn’t said it ever. But he figured it was implied. 

Richie leans down, knocks Eddie’s nose with his own. “That okay?”

Eddie kisses him again, hard and warm, and then buries his face in Richie’s shoulder. “Is that okay, he asks. Of course it’s okay. It’s just. Wow. You love me.”

“I love you.”

Richie presses a kiss into Eddie’s hair, then another one because he can. He walks Eddie backwards to his bed, and they lie down next to each other, Richie’s head on Eddie’s chest, Eddie’s fingers pulling through his curls. 

“Just because we seem to be coming to the end of our serious conversation,” Eddie says quietly, twisting one of Richie’s curls around his finger. “I feel like I should tell you something else, before we return to our regularly scheduled programming.”

“Something else? There’s more?” Richie asks, tapping out a rhythm on Eddie’s stomach. 

“Nah, not more, just wanted to clarify.” Eddie grabs Richie’s hand and squeezes. “Stop that, it tickles. I love you, too.”

Richie freezes. He had entertained the possibility that Eddie might like him back before today, had come to the conclusion that he did before he came back to the bedroom tonight, but love.  _ Eddie _ loves him.  _ What the fuck? _ Eddie  _ loves _ him. Well, that’s it then, isn’t it. Richie could die happy right now. He really doesn’t want to, because like he told Eddie, he has plans. But Eddie loves  _ him _ . 

“Wow.”

Richie can hear the smirk in Eddie’s voice when he says, “we’re back to that, are we?”

“Shush, you. You just told me you love me, I’m allowed to be a little bit catatonic.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“So you’ve said. Many, many times. Over many, many years. It no longer hurts me. I no longer hear it. I am impervious to your taunts. I am protected by the armour of your love for me.”

Eddie chuckles, and it jostles Richie’s head. He likes lying here like this, tangled together, without having to worry about holding back. Eddie plays with Richie’s fingers, and he’s allowed to watch, allowed to hook his fingers through Eddie’s and pull his hand close enough to kiss. 

“So, Spaghetti. What do you want to do tomorrow?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. Oh, actually. Can we go to the science museum?”

“Sure thing.”

“And Ben and I talked about maybe going out of the city somewhere, setting up our telescopes. We should talk to the others tomorrow, see when we can do that.”

“Is that why you’re taking astronomy? Trying to steal Bev’s man?” Richie nuzzles closer, presses his nose into Eddie’s chest. 

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, it’s really romantic at the top of that death trap of a tower with Sinistra watching our every move.”

“Cool, so we seduce Ben in a field under the stars, then what?”

“Oh, so it’s we now? Who says I’m letting you help?”

“Do I at least get to watch? As your boyfriend I feel like I should get to watch. Wait a second,” Richie sits up a little so he can look Eddie in the eye. Eddie watches him patiently, but Richie knows Eddie knows what he’s going to ask. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

“Shut up, idiot, of course I want to be your boyfriend” Eddie laughs. He kisses him properly again. It’s easier like this, no height difference making one of them bend down or the other stand on tiptoe, and they get distracted for a moment. 

When Eddie pulls back, a small smile on his face, comfortable like it’s permanent, he pokes Richie’s nose. “What about you, what do you want to do?”

“If we don’t take Bill to the cinema eventually he will get cranky, so we should probably make a time to do that.”

“A cranky Bill is nobody’s friend,” Eddie says sagely, and Richie cracks up. “But that doesn’t answer my question. What do you want to do Rich?”

Richie thinks about it, the whole stretch of summer, long days and warm nights with his friends, in his city. Richie loves London in the summer, teeming with people, magical and Muggle alike. When it’s hot, like it is tonight, people seem to come out of the woodwork, the sun drawing them outside like moths and flames, and in the evenings they spill out of work and restaurants and pubs onto the footpaths and it feels like the city’s alive, everybody sharing space instead of moving to get out of everyone else’s way. Maybe that’s just him, but he thinks it’s true of at least six other people. 

He yawns. “I don’t know. Ask me again in the morning?”

Eddie pulls him closer, hugs him tighter. He picks up Richie’s wand from where he left it on the windowsill, and whispers “Nox” a little more firmly than he’d need to with his own wand, but the light does go out. Richie can feel himself falling asleep, and hopes vaguely that Eddie doesn’t mind being his pillow. 

“Yeah, Rich. I’ll ask you in the morning. We’ve got time. We’ve got all summer.”

The last thing Richie feels before he drifts off to sleep is Eddie’s hand returning to his hair, and a warm press of lips on his forehead. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i hope everyone's keeping safe and well
> 
> come chat to me on tumblr @ manycoloureddays (or here in the comments) about this au or these kids!! now this is finished i'm going to go back to writing the children's tv au, so keep an eye out for that!


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